SEO Basics from a Beginner, for Beginners

Background:

I'm a shitty developer who wanted to learn more about SEO. I run into it all the time through HTML, but I've been more and more interested in how people build businesses from it. I wanted to share what I've learned (as a beginner) and parlay this information for any other beginners for anyone trying to do this as a source of money. Would also love your opinions.

(also, sorry if this content is shit, looks like shit, or is just too long)

 

Basics

The obvious - SEO consultants/agencies improve site rankings on Google. However, most of the people that I have been following all rank businesses in specific towns/cities. What they do:

1 - Pick Niches to Focus In

• Most successful SEO people I follow have found a high-value field. For example, doing SEO for barber-shops probably isn't the wisest niche. Each haircut is like $50, tops?

• Instead, if you pick a niche like Roofing, a single roofing job can generate 4k-10k a month. Similarly, new dental patients may generate around 1K profit per year and have longer value since they'll stick with the dentist over a longer time period.

 

2 - You Bring Businesses More Customers

I didn't understand how people justified prices for SEO but it makes sense now. Basically:

• Say a roofing company has suboptimal page rankings on Google. They're not on the front page, or if they are, they're lower down. What this means is that the number of people clicking on their links from a Google search (organic search) decreases as the rankings decrease in position.

• E.g. see this. Position 1 has an almost double higher click-through rate (CTR) than position 10.

• If Position 1 gets 20% of the traffic from the search, then that means more people potentially converting into a customer based on their site. Say that:

  • 500 people search for "roofers in Syracuse" per month
  • 20% of those 500 click on search result 1. 7.5% click on search 10.
  • Say that a business has around 15% conversion from the previous traffic that brought them to their page, where this audience calls or does a specific call-to-action.
  • That's a difference of 15 (500 x 0.20 x 0.15) potential customers versus 5 (500 x 0.075 x 0.15 = 5.6, let's round it down to 5). If the value of a customer in roofing is say only 2k per job (I googled average roofing job cost), that's the difference between 30K and 10K in potential revenue. Damn!

• Where does the traffic come from? I made up a number of 500 above. But to estimate the traffic, you can actually just do it like this.

  • You go to a tool like Google Keyword Planner and search keywords.
  • this image shows that between 100-1k people search for roofers in Syracuse per month. I also use this chrome extension that shows the search volume in the Google search itself. Looks like it says 110 for this search keyword.

 

3 - Search The Actual Keyword in Google to See Who is Actually Ranking

• Now you need to see who is actually ranking. So you just google search that keyword.
• Sites rank for more than just one keyword though, so you want to know all the keywords they rank for. Each keyword has a different search volume, so you add up all the keywords they rank for and that's an estimation of the search volume a company is getting.
• You do this by going to a site like SEMRush. You type in the name of that website, and it shows all of the keywords they're ranking for. It also tells you how much traffic they get per day, and what percentage each keyword plays as a part of that traffic, and what links point back to this site (backlinks). From what I've seen everyone means this by data-driven analysis of a site's traffic.

 

4- Improve Businesses' Damn Rankings

Now you know how a site is actually ranking that's number 1. But that's not you. You take this info and use it towards another business that has less traffic, is ranking lower for other keywords, or has a shitty site.

There's a lot to be said here, I mean this is where most of the work is done, but the very bare basics of what I've found to increase a site's rankings are on-page and off-page Seo. Each is a rabbit hole but in a nutshell:

 

1 - On-Page SEO (optimizing a website).

• optimizing the HTML code of a site, targets keywords and uses appropriate site structure, urls, website design, etc.
  • creating high-quality, long-form, and keyword-rich content behind the site that targets the keywords you're trying to rank for

Examples

• Roofing On-Page SEO
• Complete On Page Seo List 2018)

 

2- Off-page SEO (getting back-links/link building/ high-quality social signals)

• getting other reputable sites to point back to your site

• I read someone referring to backlinks as just votes - it's like a community of people talking about you before having known you, but now there's a ton of social proof

• A lot of people use PBNs, private blog networks where people have a bunch of website domains that have authority, and they have control over anchor tags / hyperlinks where they create links pointing back to the site you're trying to rank, thus giving it more authority in google's rankings.

  • I don't know how much people use these anymore...It's an area of contention it seems.

For the actual process...it's a pretty variable process but from what I've read you look at how the leaders of medium-competitive keywords are ranking and trying to replicate the strategies that make their website optimized and get them backlinks and work backwards.

 

Getting Clients

Everyone I've read is cold-emailing businesses that have suboptimal rankings, using a technique called the fake video audit.

• Basically, they send emails to people saying they've done a video audit of a website determining where they're lacking and how they can improve.
• They only respond to businesses that replied, and then create the video audit for the ones that are interested.
• The idea here is they offer massive free value, because if they're giving this much for free, then imagine how much value they'd get if they paid? (This is what I'm presuming)
• Here is a video detailing the idea
• How to do a video audit? You need to do an in-depth competitor analysis.
  • See SEO Competitor Analysis (Only Guide You Need)
  • And a video example Competition Analysis for "Roofing Brooklyn"
  • Another video example Keyword Research For Roofing Contractors

My personal strategy is to offer more personalized value up front in the initial email, and still offer the video. I believe everyone is doing this now, so the only solution to this is being more personalized, since that can never be replicated. - I found this video to be very useful that expands on this idea

 

My Approach To Learning

I have been reading and following a ton of people. My favorite resources I've been following:

• Brian Dean from Backlinko, has a ton of articles I like such as Skyscraper Technique
• GotchSEO, has a ton of great articles on-page checklist, how to do competitor analysis

• Darryl Rosser and his YouTube channel has been fantastic

• And my favorite, this guy named Shib.

  • These videos have been the most honest and insightful for me. As a warning however, the channel is fairly unorganized and sporadic, yet rich in content. I go through as many videos of his as I can but I get a ton, a TON of value here. He does not sell anything and details his own journey growing an SEO agency from scratch, from when he started in around January of 2017 I believe.

 

Questions I have / What I don't know

1. Where to get the latest knowledge from new SEO updates?
2. Are people still using PBNs as often as before / do you personally use PBNs?
3. How did you pick your niche?
4. What was your first client acquisition strategy/how did you get your first client?

 

If you know of any useful tips or suggestions, or if I messed up above somewhere above, I would love to know

sorry if this is shit, I'm not a compelling writer

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